


Masks

by Shy_Veil



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album), My Chemical Romance
Genre: Gen, Masks, Some angst, a lot of this is headcanon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-05
Updated: 2019-01-05
Packaged: 2019-10-04 21:45:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17312405
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shy_Veil/pseuds/Shy_Veil
Summary: The Fabulous Four finally tell each other where they got their masks.





	Masks

The desert wind scraped against the windows and left sand in piles by the door. Kobra leaned on the bar in the Diner, reading a magazine and waiting for Jet Star to get back from a supply run. Fun Ghoul and Party Poison were sat at one of the old, worn down booths playing some card game Kobra didn’t know the rules to. Time passed slowly. Though you can only read the same magazine so many times before your eyes get a bit hazy while gliding over them. 

“Hey, Kobra,” Fun Ghoul called to him across the room. Apparently, their game had ended, and given Poison’s sulking expression, he had lost. Kobra just lifted his head up instead of replying.

“Where did you find that helmet?”

Kobra glanced over at where his large yellow motorcycle helmet sat abandoned on a table. He’d never really thought about telling Ghoul where he got it. Didn’t think it mattered. 

Kobra was about to reply when Jet busted through the door of the Diner carrying a case of Power Pup and water containers under his arms. “Hey guys,” he said, clearly winded from carrying the weight and the bandana covering his nose. If Kobra had noticed the sound of the car’s engine coming in, he would have thought to go out and help him with it all, but he’d been too lost in thought. “What’s going on?” he asked as he sat the supplies down on the bar.

Fun Ghoul swung his legs over the seat of the booth, “Not much. I was asking Kobra where he found that damn helmet.”

Jet shifted his attention towards Kobra now too. “You know I don’t think I’ve heard that story either.”

“I’d be shocked if you did, given how Kobra never gets a word in inchwise with you two,” Party finally spoke. Fun Ghoul just nodded in agreement, “Wait, do you know the story?” Ghoul asked suddenly.

Party just stared at him for a minute. “I was there, dipshit.”

“Oh, yeah that makes sense.” He squinted his eyes a little, and Poison laughed.

“Anyway,” Kobra said, silencing them all, “I found it an old garage on the Getaway Mile. Me and Party were hiding out there for a while, and it was just sat in a box.”

“That’s it?” Ghoul asked, seeming a little bit disappointed.

“Yeah, sorry. I mean at the time it was black and boring, so I just got the paint and vinyl letters from Show Pony later on.”

Jet Star sat on the floor, one of his favorite positions since he says the thin cushions on the booths are uncomfortable, and leaned back against the bar. Fun Ghoul slid down from the table onto the floor beside him. 

Ghoul’s eyes were still staring at the helmet on the table. “Can you see through those okay?” 

For a moment, Kobra was just surprised that no one had asked before. But then again, a killjoy’s mask was pretty personal. Like the physical manifest of their identity, so maybe none of them wanted to question it. 

“Yeah, I can see just fine, the letters are mostly see through.” Ghoul knew it was kind of a stupid question, given how many claps he’d seen Kobra go through wearing the helmet with the visor down, when he didn’t just wrap a bandana around his face.

“What about you, Ghoul?” Jet asked, changing the subject.

“Hmm?” 

“Where’d you get the Frankenstein mask?”

“Oh, Party gave it to me.”

Jet and Kobra both looked over at him for that. Neither of them knew about this. It was a genuine shock given how much Party seemed to hate Ghoul in the beginning. 

Who knows how long ago now, Kobra, Poison, and Jet had found Ghoul dying in the desert. They were a lot closer to Battery City than they usually liked to get. Which was why Jet had considered just leaving the stranger to the vultures. He was clearly a city born, clad in all white BLI uniforms. Kobra and Poison had convinced him to help the guy, completely oblivious to the truth about him. It wasn’t until they got him back to the Diner, and Ghoul woke up in a panic about being surrounded by three armed killjoys, that they’d realised what they’d done. 

Kobra remembered Party asking the man who was slowly backing away from them on the floor his name. “Frank,” he replied, face switching from fear to a blank expression.

“Alright, Frank, who the hell are you?”

“I was an Exterminator.”

He remembered how quickly they all had their guns pointed directly at Ghoul’s face. He raised his hands, “Do what you want.” 

“What the hell are you doing out here?” Jet spat at him.

“Escaping.” Frank’s, Ghoul’s, face remained stoic.

“Yeah, right,” Party cocked his gun.

“Hey, Poison, wait a minute.” Jet said.

“And why the fuck should I wait a minute?” Party glared at Jet. 

Kobra glanced at them. Jet still looked pissed, but he was a little apprehensive on just shooting the man where he stood. Poison, however, looked like he was ready to rip the guy’s throat out through his teeth. 

“Poison, they wouldn’t send an exterminator out here unarmed. If he was a threat, we wouldn’t have found him unconscious in the desert.”

Kobra looked back at the ex-exterminator, his hands were still raised. He was staring down the barrel of Poison’s gun like he wanted him to shoot it.

“Why’d you leave?” Poison managed to ask through gritted teeth.

Frank’s face flickered, but he didn’t answer.

“Why’d you leave?” Poison repeated, finger still on his trigger and voice like steel.

“They were going to kill me anyway.”

Poison tilted his head back, eyes still locked on the stranger.

“Why were they going to kill you?”

Frank hesitated again, though his face barely altered.

“Fucking answer me," Party shouted through gritted teeth.

“I let one go.”

“What?”

“It was a battle. One of you was lying injured on the ground. I didn’t kill him.” His voice was tight.

“So they were just going to fucking kill you for having mercy once?” Jet asked, his voice was cold.

“They were going to send me to rehabilitation. So they could fix me.”

“And why didn’t they?” Jet asked.

“Unmanageable levels of empathy.”

Poison scoffed, but didn’t say anything.

“And then?” Jet asked.

“They stopped wasting drugs to keep me under their control. They were just going to make me into a Draculoid anyway.”

“So you decided to jump ship.”

“I figured out that it was better to be free out here than in their service.”

“So the plan was to hitchhike with some unsuspecting killjoys?” Poison still sounded like he was considering killing him, but the tragic backstory had taken the edge off.

“The plan was to die in the desert like a dog.”

“You’re out of luck then,” Poison said, lowering his gun. The others followed his lead. The guy was clearly confused, but moved his hands down. 

The plan after that was to get as much intel about BLI as they could out of Frank, and then kill him, but they started to reconsider. It took a long time, but they started to trust him. It helped that his main goal in every battle was to take out as many Dracs as possible, with the anger of hell written in his face every time. There was clearly more to the story of what BLI had done to him than he was letting on. But all the info he gave them was solid, so they decided he deserved not to be forced to talk about a past he was clearly trying to repent for. Besides, it was damn useful to have someone properly trained to fight with a blaster on their side.

Poison coughed, snapping Kobra back into present day. The sun was starting to go down, it cast an orange haze over all their faces.

“When did he give you the mask?” Jet asked, trying to remember when Ghoul started wearing one. Right around the time he started to consider himself a killjoy.

Ghoul was about to say something, but Poison cut him off. “I gave it to him the night after he saved my life. I’d had it sat in my room for a while, figured he deserved it.” It wasn’t hard for them to remember precisely when Ghoul had managed to fight a whole team a dracs to keep them away from an injured Party during a clap. It was probably one of the first times any of them began to truly trust him.

Ghoul was still, staring at something they couldn't see, his face was cold and unmoving. But the moment passed, and he looked at them again without saying a word.

Jet just huffed and looked down in surprise. Kobra moved off the stool and sat on the floor next to Jet. Party sat down cross legged across from them. They must have looked strange to outsiders, a bunch of hardened men sat on the floor telling stories at dusk. 

“What’s your story then?” Ghoul asked, looking at Jet. He was trying to shift the focus away from his past, which was maybe the only thing he hated in this world more than BLI itself. And the two things were connected.

Jet looked down at his space age astronaut helmet, with the paint peeling off and parts of the plastic busted. He thought for a moment.

“My dad gave it to me.” 

All their heads lifted. Jet’s past was more shrouded in mystery than any of them. He hardly ever spoke about it willingly. All they really knew is that he was born out here in the zones and had never stepped foot in the city. Which was a feat unto itself given how hard it was to raise a child in the desert. Beyond that, all they really had were one word answers and half-assed assumptions.

“Really?” Party asked.

“Yeah, um, he was called Trip Light. Don’t think I ever told you that, but anyway, we were travelling with this big group of joys when I was probably about ten. I remember him bringing it back to the old warehouse we were staying in, to give it to me. He said he found it in some abandoned truck on the far end of Route Guano. He…” he stopped for a minute, clearly uncomfortable talking about himself in this capacity, “he was killed not long after that.”

“I’m sorry.” It was Party that spoke, but if they were being honest, none of them really knew what it was like to lose a family member like that. The rest of them were all raised in the city, Ghoul as an exterminator, and Party and Kobra as genetic defects. Besides, with all the drugs those roles made BLI put them on, even if they did remember their families, it wouldn’t have meant anything to them to lose them.

“It was a long time ago.” 

The silence continued for a moment, Jet shifted, lost in thoughts that hadn’t been brought up in years.

After a while, Jet spoke again. “Poison,”

“Yeah?”

“Your turn.”

Poison managed to crack half a smile. 

“I found the Mousecat head in the same warehouse that Kobes found the helmet. It was in a pile of a bunch of BLI children’s toys. The yellow mask I bought off Tommy years ago because I thought it looked cool.”

Sometimes it was that simple. Though Kobra knew there was more to the story, that warehouse had been their living hell in the days after their escape from Batt City. There were no simple memories there.

“What’s it like in Battery City, anyway?” Kobra felt Poison and Ghoul tense. It was mostly just Jet trying to get them to talk about their pasts the way he had. Kobra’s fists clenched anyway.

“You must’ve heard stories,” Kobra mumbled.

“Yeah, but not yours.”

“It’s the worst kind of purgatory.” Poison said, eyes somber and facing Kobra, as though he was asking Kobra’s permission to continue. Kobra nodded, and Poison kept talking. “Maybe it’s different for the people at the top of the food chain, but Kobes and I were awful in BLI’s eyes.” He stopped and looked away for a moment, eyes shutting tightly.

“Party, you don’t have to—“

“We were freaks.” Kobra cut Jet off. He spoke slowly, trying to choose all his words carefully, trying to keep himself from losing it. “BLI keeps a close eye on every child raised in Batt City, if any of us deviate from the norm, show any signs of rebellion or even creativity, they’re taken away. Put into these fucked up prison places where we… where we were ‘re-educated’ as they called it. It was really just an excuse to use us for hard labor and keep us away from anything important. We spent most of our time in white cells and white clothing. They didn’t really bother to drug us usually, so we all knew exactly what was going on, and we could feel all the pain they put us through.”

Kobra took a breath, and Poison, having gotten himself together, took over for his baby brother. 

“Most of the kids were used as laborers, typing shit and keeping everything running. But, me and Kobra, we were… test subjects. They used us to try out new sedatives and medicines to keep citizens in line.”

Ghoul kept his eyes locked on the ground, he pulled his legs up under his chin and wrapped his arms around himself.

“Honestly, I think I probably would have been able to take it if it were just me. I probably would have let them just do whatever they wanted with me until I was old enough to become a drac like the rest of the kids. But… they were always harder on Kobra. Honestly, I think they’ve got a vendetta against those kids, they were cruel to us for the sake of it sometimes. They’d take our meals away for no reason, telling us they wanted to how the drugs reacted to an empty stomach. But I think the worst part was when they weren’t testing things on us. They’d just leave us in those cells. Just white walls and white clothing. All we had was each other.” He kept glancing at Kobra during his speech. It was something they’d talked about before. In the early days of their time in the zones, when it was just him and Poison, they would wake each other up having nightmares of BLI and have long conversations afterwards. 

“How’d you escape?” Ghoul asked, voice low.

“What? You curious where the breach in your security was?” Kobra spat at him without thinking. All their heads shot up at the sudden outburst. Ghoul turned away, visibly on the verge of tears, though trying to hide it.

“I’m so sorry,” Ghoul replied, regretting his words about as quickly as he said them. Kobra had never seen Ghoul with so much emotion, let alone sincere sadness. He grimaced, tilting his head back.

“Hey, It’s alright. Just wasn’t expecting the question is all,” Kobra said. Ghoul nodded but didn’t look at any of them.

“It really doesn’t matter how we escaped. It was mostly luck,” Poison said.

Jet looked visibly uncomfortable from starting the whole thing. Or maybe he was just caught up in realising the grim reality of the less cushy parts of Batt City. The zones were awful sometimes, but Battery City was nothing but hell for anyone that wasn’t perfectly adept at obeying every order. 

“I… I didn’t know.” Ghoul said, his eyes had cleared, but his voice was still trembling slightly. He looked at Kobra and Poison. For a moment, none of them had anything to say.

“I believe you.” 

Ghoul nodded. It was silent another minute. Jet tilted his head and looked up at the ceiling. Then Ghoul straightened up.

“I… I spent my whole life believing that Battery City was a utopia, and that the only thing keeping us from perfection was the killjoys. They were just some sickos in the desert, hell bent on destroying something perfect in order to make it beautiful. I never knew how wrong I was until I had already sacrificed myself to fight for BLI. I thought I was a soldier in the most important war. Realising that I meant nothing. That none of it meant anything. That was the moment I knew I had to get out. I had to stop defending them or die trying. I never even considered being able to fight against them. When I was planning my way out, I thought I’d die in the desert for certain. But I didn’t care.”

“You’re welcome,” Poison said, trying to lighten the mood. Ghoul just leaned against him. 

“I never, um, I never did ask…” Jet spoke again.

Tonight was clearly the night to get the hard questions out of the way.

“Ask what?” Ghoul replied. His voice was a bit clearer now. 

“Why didn’t you kill that joy all those years ago?”

They all instantly knew what he was referring to, no one needed to say anything. 

“I don’t know. I just didn’t. He was on the ground, an easy target, and I just didn’t take it. Like it was somehow that simple to not have to kill for them. Suddenly none of it made sense anymore.”

“Did the joy—“

“One of the Dracs got him.”

“Oh.”

Ghoul spoke quietly now. “Yeah.”

They all sat in silence again. The sun had gone down finally. The moonlight and old solar lanterns they kept on the floor were the only things lighting their faces. 

“Maybe that’s enough for one night.”

Maybe they were all just tired of looking at each other.

Jet stood up, he said a quick goodnight to all of them and headed into the back rooms, having learned a lot more tonight that any of them really intended to.

Poison got up, and offered a hand to Kobra, who was still sat on the ground. Ghoul stayed where he was. 

“You coming?”

“No… no, I’ll catch up.”

Neither Kobra or Poison questioned it. He’d had to dig up memories he’d long since buried tonight. He couldn’t bring himself to look up at them as they walked away.

They disappeared off into their rooms. Ghoul sat alone on the floor, thinking about everything he’d learned, about everything he still didn’t know about the corporation he’d lived to protect once. He tried to dwell on what he’d done to repent, on how his friends had all given him a second chance. But no matter how he looked at it, he was the monster that they all should be afraid of. He didn’t deserve what they’d given him. He just hadn't known how much. He knew he couldn’t repay them. Ghoul fell asleep to those thoughts swarming in his head like locusts, clutching the mask Poison had given him, stuffed in his jacket pocket.

**Author's Note:**

> Follow me on Tumblr @shy-veil


End file.
